How a @GitHub Update Could Be The Game Changer For #GAFE Teachers
GitHub made a recent update to their web interface that makes me finally believe it is a place every educator belongs.
You can now create and drag and drop files into your repos. Think of a repo as a cabinet that holds both files and folders. Attached to your “cabinet” is a clipboard where people record issues they have. A repo uses the same feature in GitHub.
Teachers. I know you love Google. I do to. My journey to the open web began through Google Apps.
GitHub is a little different. It is yours.
Teachers, all the work you do in Google Apps does it belong to you? When you leave your district they can and will take away your GAFE rights.
What happens to everything you built? Do you take it with you? Did you copy everything over to a personal account or is this act banned by district policy?
Maybe its time to be building into GitHub, even if you bring it to GAFE later. I never recommended GitHub for most educators. It was simply too hard to use.
The metaphors in design are confusing and unrelated (pull request, branch, fork, commit), but most discouraging was having to use “Terminal.”
I know, most of you have no idea what “Terminal” is, and the need no longer exists. GitHub now allows you to drag and drop files and add new files from their web interface.
The metaphors still suck but they are rooted in a long history of programming. It will be a discourse teachers might just have to pick up.
Even with having to learn the affordances of the tools and discourses of the communities teachers should start using GitHub.
Why not own what you make?
I do hope you use a license that lets other teachers remix what you made , but you don’t have to, and that is the whole point.
Take control of your content.
Originally published at quickthoughts.jgregorymcverry.com on February 23, 2016.
